Places in The Gospel as it was revealed to me

I think that house must be as dear to Her as Paradise, because of the mystery which was accomplished in it.

• Locations - House of Nazareth

• Jesus as a child
• Joseph of Jacob (Saint Joseph)
• Locations - Jerusalem
• Places - Jerusalem Temple
• Summary of EMV
• Symeon (Jerusalem prophet)
• The Virgin Mary

32.2 Then I see some houses and the walls around a town. They go in through a gate and start walking on the ground which is all broken up, and very irregular. Progress is now much more difficult, both because the traffic causes the donkey to stop very often and because the holes, where stones are missing, make the poor animal jerk continuously and thus Mary and the Child are also disturbed.

The road is not flat. It is uphill, although very slightly. It is a narrow road running between high houses with small narrow low doors and only a few windows on the road. High above, the sky can be seen peeping with many thin blue strips between the houses, or rather between the terraces. Down in the street there are many people and much shouting. They meet other people on foot or riding donkeys or leading loaded donkeys and a crowd following a cumbersome camel caravan. At a certain moment, a patrol of Roman legionaries passes by with a great noise of hooves and arms and they disappear beyond an arch built across a narrow stony road.

Joseph turns left along a wider and more pleasant road. I can see the embattled town walls, with which I am already familiar, at the end of the street.

Mary dismounts from the little donkey near a gate where there is a kind of stall for other donkeys. I say «stall» because it is a kind of shed, or better still, a kind of shed spread with straw; there are also some poles with rings to which the animals are tied.

Joseph gives some coins to a little man who has gone up to him and with them he buys some hay and he draws a pail of water from a rustic well in the corner. He then feeds the donkey. He joins Mary and they both enter the enclosure of the Temple.

• Locations - Jerusalem

32.3 At first they turn their steps towards an arcade where the merchants are, to whom Jesus later will give a good lashing: the vendors of lambs and doves and the money-changers. Joseph buys two little white pigeons. He does not change any money: he obviously has what is required.

They then make for a side door, with eight steps, as all the doors seem to have, because the centre of the Temple is raised above the surrounding ground. The door opens into a great hall like the doors of our houses in towns, to give you an idea, only this one is larger and more ornate. In the hall there are two kinds of altars on the right and on the left, that is two rectangular constructions, the purpose of which I do not understand at first. They are like low basins, because the internal part is lower than the external rim, which is a few centimetres higher.

A priest approaches them, I do not know whether he was called by Joseph or whether he did so of his own accord. Mary offers Her two little pigeons and since I know their fate, I turn my eyes elsewhere. I look at the decorations of the very heavy portal, of the ceiling and of the hall. But I get the impression, by a side glance, that the priest sprays Mary with some water. It must be water, because I do not see any stains on Her dress. Then Mary, Who had given the priest a handful of coins together with the two pigeons (I had forgotten to mention that), goes into the real Temple, in the company of the priest.

I am watching everything. It is a most ornate place. Sculptured angels’ heads, palms and decorations adorn the columns, the walls and the ceiling. Light comes in through strange long narrow windows, obviously without panes, cut diagonally compared to the walls. I suppose the idea is to keep the rain out.

32.4 Mary moves forward to a certain point. She then stops. A few metres from Her, there are more steps on top of which there is a kind of altar, beyond which there is another construction.

I now realise that I thought I was in the Temple, instead I was in the part surrounding the real Temple, that is the Holy, beyond which no one can proceed, apparently, except the priests. What I therefore thought was the Temple, is but an enclosed vestibule, which on three sides encircles the Temple, in which the Tabernacle is enclosed. I do not know whether I have made myself understood. But I am neither an architect nor an engineer.

Mary offers the Child, Who has woken up and is turning His innocent eyes towards the priest, with the astonished look of infants a few days old. The priest takes Him in his arms and raises Him, with arms fully stretched out, towards the Temple, standing against the kind of altar placed on top of the steps. The rite is over. The Child is handed back to His Mother and the priest goes away.

• Places - Jerusalem Temple

• Jesus as a child
• Locations - Bethlehem of Judea
• Summary of EMV
• The Virgin Mary

• Anne of Bethlehem
• Herod the Great
• Jesus as a child
• Joseph of Jacob (Saint Joseph)
• Locations - Anne of Bethlehem Hospital House
• Locations - Bethlehem of Judea
• Summary of EMV
• The Virgin Mary
• Three Kings (Epiphany)

34.2 I see Bethlehem, small and white, gathered like a brood of chickens under the stars. Two main streets divide the town crosswise: one coming from beyond the town, and it is the main road that continues on the other side, the other road runs across the town, from one side to the other, but does not proceed further. There are other small streets dividing the town into many sections, without the slightest resemblance to a road layout as we know it, but suited to both the ground, on various levels, and to the various houses built here and there, according to the characteristics of the ground and the whims of the builder. Some run to the right, others to the left, some at a corner with the road skirting them, which consequently seems like a ribbon unwinding tortuously instead of being a straight one running from one end to the other without any diversion. Now and again there is a little square serving either for a market, or a fountain, or because, due to the total lack of a building layout, there is a small piece of sloping ground, not suitable for any structure.

The place where I seem to be standing, appears to be exactly one of those irregular little squares. It should be square, or at least rectangular. It is instead so strange a kind of trapezium that it looks like an obtuse angled triangle with a blunted tip. On the longest side: the base of the triangle, there is a low wide building, the widest in the village. Outside, there is a smooth, bare, high wall, with only two doors, which at present are closed. Inside instead, in the large square, there are many windows on the first floor; while underneath there are arcades surrounding yards strewn with straw and rubble, with drinking troughs for horses and other animals. Attached to the rustic pillars, there are rings to which the animals are tied, and on one side there is a large shed to shelter herds and mounts. I realise that it is the Inn of Bethlehem.

On the other two equal sides there are several houses, some large, some small, some with a little orchard, some without, because in some cases the front of the house looks onto the square, in others, it is in the rear of the house facing the square. On the narrow side, facing the caravanserai, there is only one little house, with an outside staircase, which reaches the first floor and leads into its rooms. All the rooms are closed because it is night. There is nobody in the streets, as it is so late.

34.3 I notice that the night light is increasing, it descends from a sky crowded with stars, which are so beautiful in the eastern sky: they are so bright and large and seemingly so near that it is possible to reach them and touch those flowers sparkling in the velvet of the vault of Heaven. I raise my eyes to see the source of the increasing light. A star, of such an unusual size that the moon seems small in comparison, is moving forward in the sky of Bethlehem. And all the others seem to vanish and make room for it, as maidservants do when their queen passes by: its brightness is such that it outshines them all. From the sphere, which looks like a huge pale sapphire lit up internally by a sun, a trail departs in which blond topazes, green emeralds, opalescent opals, blood-red flashes of rubies and gentle sparklings of amethysts mingle with the prevailing pale sapphire. All the precious stones on earth are in the trail that sweeps the sky with a fast and undulating movement as if it were alive. But the prevailing colour is the one emanating from the globe of the star: the heavenly pale sapphire hue which comes down and makes the houses, the streets, the ground of Bethlehem, the Saviour’s cradle, look like blue silver. It is no longer the poor town, which by our standards is smaller than a country village. It is a fantastic town of a fairy tale, all in silver. And the water of the fountains and of the vessels is liquid diamond.

And with a brighter radiation of light the star stops over the little house on the narrowest side of the square. Neither the people dwelling in it, nor the people in Bethlehem see it, because they are all asleep in their closed houses, but the star accelerates its shining pulsations and the trail vibrates and wavers faster and faster drawing a kind of semicircle in the sky. And the sky lights up because of the net of stars drawn by the trail, a net full of precious jewels which shine and colour all the other stars with the most graceful hues, as if they were communicating their own joy to them.

The little house is transfigured by the liquid fire of gems. The roof of the small terrace, the dark stone steps, the little door, are like a block of pure silver sprayed with diamond and pearl dust. No royal palace on earth has ever had or ever will have a staircase like this one, built to be used by angels and by a Mother Who is the Mother of God. The little feet of the Immaculate Virgin can alight on that white splendour, the little feet which are destined to rest on the steps of God’s throne. But the Virgin does not know. She is awake near her Son’s cradle and is praying. There are splendours in Her soul which outdo the splendour with which the star is decorating material things.

• Locations - Anne of Bethlehem Hospital House
• Locations - Bethlehem of Judea

The Magi climb the steps and go in. They enter a room that extends from the road to the back of the house. The little kitchen garden at the back can be seen through a window which is open to the sun. There are doors in the other two walls, and the owners, that is a man, a woman and some boys and younger children cast sidelong glances through them.

• Locations - Anne of Bethlehem Hospital House

The room [where the three Wise Men were welcomed] is as long as the house

• Locations - Anne of Bethlehem Hospital House

• Escape to Egypt
• Herod the Great
• Jesus as a child
• Joseph of Jacob (Saint Joseph)
• Locations - Anne of Bethlehem Hospital House
• Summary of EMV
• The Virgin Mary